


You're The Inspiration

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Series: Femslash February 2019 [11]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Childhood, Children, Christmas, Danvers-Luthor Child, Danvers-Luthor Family - Freeform, Day 11, F/F, Family, Femslash, Femslash February, Femslash February 2019, Holiday, Hurt/Comfort, I have no idea what to tag, Married Couple, Romance, Sad, The Death of Supergirl, This is really sad, couples, families, just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 12:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: Femslash February Day 11! Cathy Luthor-Danvers was seven years old when one holiday, close to Christmas Eve, her Mom (Kara) had to leave the house to help the city she said. A year later, Mom still hasn't come home, Cathy doesn't know why, but Christmas is coming once again, and the now eight-year-old is determined to have both Mom and Mommy for Christmas, no matter what...





	You're The Inspiration

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This is damn sad and killed me to write, so please proceed with caution if you can't handle a world without Kara Danvers.

Christmas was just around the corner, Cathy Luthor-Danvers had known. The snow was falling all around the suburb and the pine trees were getting dragged across from the small sanctuary park and into the houses of all the families around the neighbourhood. The older kids were throwing snowballs at each other across the streets and building snowmen.

Cathy’s mom (Kara) and mommy (Lena) took her out to build one during one morning, Mommy bringing out piping hot waffles and three warm mugs of succulent hot cocoa along with a fresh carrot for the nose. Mom found small pebbles under the snow seemingly with x-ray vision Cathy thought like Supergirl had the ability to use. They made a good mouth for the snow creation, along with two proud pine cones from the Christmas Trees scattered around. Finally, Mommy’s carrot made a great nose. The snowman stayed in the front garden for weeks leading up to the holidays.

Then, one day, Cathy was drawing some doodles for Kara and Lena of the whole family in holiday getup. There was some commotion on the television and she saw her Mommy moving into the kitchen to talk to Mom. There were loud voices, before Kara came to Cathy, her hair fraying out of her ponytail and frizzing. She leaned down and kissed the small girl as she swayed her legs, blissfully unaware of anything happening outside of her land of drawing with crayons.

“Cathy, Mom’s just gotta go out for a little while, I’ll be back in a lil while, okay?” Kara told her daughter, stroking her hair gracefully.

“Did Miss Grant call you back to the office, Mom? Did she lose her glasses again?” Cathy asked, knowing Mom’s boss was nefarious for calling her back to the magazine for odd and meaningless things. She noticed Mommy in the corner of her eye standing with glassy eyes but didn’t clock the tears. “Are we going too, Mommy?” Cathy followed up. Mommy shook her head.

Kara looked at Lena and then back to Cathy, kissing her daughter’s head again. “No, you two stay here, baby. Mom’ll be back any minute, don’t worry. She’s just gotta help the city with something,” she reassured the small girl.

“Good luck helping the city, Mom! Bring us home something!” Cathy called as Kara went for the door, her face looking a little hurried.

“What would ya want, baby?” Kara asked, smiling and her own eyes a little glassy. Cathy didn’t notice as she went back to her drawings.

Cathy, still scribbling away on a three-character drawing of herself, Mom, and Mommy. “A girlfriend for Teddy, she’s a little lonely and has a lot of love. She needs someone to share it with... Like you and Mommy,” Cathy asked, earning a sharp gasp from Lena as she cowered back into the kitchen.

Kara held back her tears as the very distant and quiet boom of an explosion rang in her superhuman hearing. There was no way Cathy heard it. Looking, longing for Lena to come back, but nothing coming, Kara smiled at her small and beautiful daughter, imitating a false chuckle to try and assure the girl all was well. Out in the city, Doomsday was waiting for her. “Sure, Cathy. I’ll find a girlfriend for Teddy.”

Walking out the door, Kara left her family to meet her adversary in the city, the girl unaware that her Mom was not coming back...

 

***

 

Cathy turned from 7 to 8 in the time before the next Christmas, and still, Mom hadn’t come home from the city. Teddy didn’t have a girlfriend, and Mommy was quieter than the small girl had ever known her to be.

There was something she wasn’t telling Cathy, that much the eight-year-old could tell just from what Lena wasn’t saying to her. When Cathy finished her drawing of herself, Mom, Mommy, and Teddy all gathered for the holiday, of course, Lena had praised her, sung her good self to the heavens and framed the picture on the wall. When Cathy had bad dreams, when she needed the warmth of her parents, of course, Lena had scooped her up from her bed or wherever and took her in her warm and maternal embrace. When the eighth birthday came, while still buried in tears, of course, Lena had made sure her birth daughter had the best occasion she could have.

But there always came the questions at every opportunity – ‘When’s Mom coming home? Did she finish helping the city yet? Why did Supergirl stop flying around?’ All played on Cathy’s mind, and all were things Mommy could never bring herself to answer.

“Mommy... When Mom gets home...” Cathy began to say, cleaning up the area around the family photographs – images of the three of them; two beautiful women and one lovely-looking child daughter. Cathy with Kara’s beautiful blonde hair and Lena’s deep emerald green eyes.

Lena came into the living room. “Cathy...” She started. This was it; she was going to tell her daughter the truth about Kara, going to tell her she was Supergirl and that she lost her fight to Doomsday. That the battle in National City had destroyed them both and that the Justice League of America had buried the Kryptonian. She was going to tell the eight-year-old her mother was a damned hero.

“...Let’s not talk about Mom, okay?” She failed. Kneeling, Lena held Cathy by the arms and looked at her as seriously as she could manage. “Mom got into an accident, Cathy. She’s not coming home, honey...”

Cathy welled with tears instantly as she screamed at Lena. “Mom’s coming home!” She barked in an infant cry. “She promised!”

Lena snapped; her guilt, her sorrow and her loss completely stabbing her with heartfelt pain as she thought of Kara’s smiling face being in the house no longer. “Cathy, don’t you understand? Forget about Mom, honey. She’s not coming home!” The raven-haired widow yelled, not able to control her voice as her incredible sadness wrapped around her. She got up, already sobbing, wiping her tears the best she could with her pyjama shirt sleeve and wandering back into the kitchen. “This is hard for me too, sweetie...”

The little girl was left almost praying to the small family mural with her hands balled to combined fists as she looked into the largest picture of all of them.

“Please, Mom... Please come home.”

Maybe something, or someone, heard her...

 

***

 

The next day, Cathy woke with more zeal than a thousand deacons and a congregation of archbishops. Lena was at her desk in the sitting room, looking out at the morning winter sky, head in her hands and looking like she was regretting the events of the last night. Cathy peered inside but didn’t say anything to her mother, realising that while she didn’t believe that Mom wasn’t coming back, she didn’t want to bring up the conversation once again. She left her Mommy alone and went to the picture frames again, picking up one of Kara alone, and smiling to herself.

“You’ll be back soon, right Mom? You saved the city, and you’ll be back with us soon enough... When you’re ready,” she told the picture, and herself. An idea struck her like a lightning bolt.

She reached into the sitting room, tugging on Lena’s arm sleeve and holding a duster in her hand. “Come on, Mommy. Let’s clean up Mom’s special room before she gets back!” Cathy almost ordered her mother enthusiastically, holding the duster like a warrior of cleanliness and smiling wider than she had in a long time. It was enough to make Lena cry all over again, which she almost did.

As the tears twitched in her eyes, Lena forced them back, and wiped her face with her sleeve again, cracking a small smile. “Okay, honey. Come on, let’s make sure it’s spotless, for Mom,” she went along with her daughter.

Grabbing the bucket of cleaning supplies from the kitchen and the glass wax from the garage, Lena pulled out two aprons – one big one for herself and another smaller one for Cathy, giving her daughter a pair of cleaning gloves too and a cloth. They scoured the study from top to bottom, carefully covering everything that was delicate, and then dusting the rest. Cathy took the desk chair and stood on it, Lena telling her to be careful as she dusted the hard to reach places onto of shelves and cases. Lena waxed the glass frames and a cabinet, making sure that the secret switch into Kara’s Supergirl room was left completely undisturbed by their daughter. She still didn’t have the courage to tell Cathy who her Mom really was, it was too much for her to tell her how she had fallen.

When they were done, Cathy was spent, her energy gone, but she refused to be tuckered out entirely. She wanted to do more – she needed to busy herself with her Mom’s memory all the more.

Lena pulled out a leather-bound book from the shelf. “What’s that, Mommy?” Cathy asked, intrigued as to why Lena would pull it out.

“Mom’s diary, honey...” Lena breathed, breaking the clasp open. Suddenly, and helplessly, a flapping piece of paper slipped from between the pages and floated to the floor gracefully. They both looked in stark surprise as Cathy picked it up, looking at it.

It was them; Cathy and Lena, the small girl holding Teddy and them both smiling for the camera. It was years old, but Kara had kept it tucked in her diary, close to her heart and soul until the very end, so it would always be with her, in her bag or in this room. The day she’d left to fight Doomsday, she didn’t have anything with her except her clothes, thrown somewhere and left in her transformation into Supergirl.

“Mom... You always looked out for us,” Cathy said to herself and the photograph, pressing it close to her chest and hugging it. The words made Lena want to cry again, but she smiled at Cathy, her eyes growing glassy.

“Now it’s our turn, to look after your Mom, honey...”

 

***

 

They put the holiday decorations up afterwards, Cathy surprisingly full of energy and wanting to drag out the day, but eventually, she tired too much. Her bed called her, and that night Lena slept with her, for the first real night in almost a year.

She saw her that night.

Mom was walking, through the night’s sky, clad in the blue and red super suit of Supergirl, her long and beautiful golden hair flowing like a second cape behind her. Cathy ran, finding herself running on air, with arms outstretched for dear life as she gave chase to the fading Supergirl visage. She had to catch her. Mom was walking away and Cathy had to catch her. She ran and ran but she couldn’t keep up, not in time as Mom walked further away and into the night.

Cathy put her hands to her mouth and screamed after the figure in the night. “Mom!” She screamed. “Mom!!” She called out louder into the purgatory. The figure kept walking. “Supergirl! Mom!” Cathy cried at the top of her lungs.

She caught the woman’s attention, she was turning around.

Cathy opened her eyes to see the morning’s light through her bedroom window, Mommy’s arms wrapped snugly around her, but the little girl broke out of them to look outside. Tears came to her eyes as she realised it had all been a dream. She reached for Teddy, clutching it closely. “Mom... It’s almost Christmas...”

There was a shuffling outside in the snow, the steps of strong and heavy feet, and then a small knock on the door.

Cathy darted from the bed, even startling and waking her mother to follow in a run, half asleep. The eight-year-old needed to get downstairs needed to find out what was going on. She found herself whispering to herself as she leapt from step to step down the stairs. “Mom, mom, mom, mom it’s you!” Cathy told herself. Then she opened the door, seeing nothing except the blanketed white of snow and the vast expanse of the neighbourhood. Nothing else remained. Mommy came to her back and held the small girl.

“What is it, honey?” Lena asked, starstruck as Cathy didn’t say a word, she was simply looking out to the end of the road and fixated her vision on it. Lena asked her again but no reply came. “Cathy?” Mommy asked a final time, and finally, she looked up to the end of the road, dying in a final gasped breath as she saw what Cathy saw.

“Mom... She’s here...”

Veiled and coated in an aura of light, faded like a spirit and sure enough to Cathy’s words, there she was – Kara Luthor-Danvers in her Supergirl costume walking down the road with a teddy bear in her hands. She’d even remembered the girlfriend for Teddy. Cathy burst into tears, her Mommy too as they propelled into a sprint down the road.

They clutched the spirit in a tearful flurry of hugs, never wanting to let go, Lena breaking as she saw her wife again, even as a spirit. It was something else, something supernatural, but Lena was never going to question it as she looked at Kara again.

“Mom!” Cathy cried. “You’re Supergirl!”

“Of course I am... Who else do you think saved the city all those times? As long as I had you as my inspiration, nothing could stop me coming home...”

Cathy was sobbing, Lena too, but not as much as her daughter. “Nothing?”

Kara’s spirit smiled down at her. “Absolutely nothing, baby. You’re the inspiration I always needed to bring me back home...”


End file.
